The old Blue girl

When my husband refers to "The Old Blue Girl" it usually either means our old blue cattle dog {Tilly} or he means the other love of his life, the old blue Fordson Tractor.

She is about as old as he is,and we bought her off the local town Progress association cheaply  as it was becoming a burden for them to  find  volunteer drivers for her to do slashing and mowing, as they needed to have the appropriate training and certificates to operate it in the town.So the council now does all that work for them.
We use her for so much, there is rarely a visit to the farm goes by that she isn't brought out for  some work.

We used her to rip all the trenches down to the bore that we drilled, and up to the generator with the aid of a big old heavy single ripper that we borrowed off friends in Dubbo. Then after all the pipework and electric cables were laid we borrowed a blade off one of our neighbours and filled all the trenches in.

My husband hooks up the old scarifyer in the above photos and drags it around to break up the earth to plant a bit of feed or grass, this old piece of machinery was on the property when we bought it and has been very useful.,It's not the greatest way to do it, but serves the purpose for now.
Every time I hear him on the tractor ,I take my camera out, and if caught photographing him I usually get a cheeky smile or a slightly rude gesture telling me to go away.

I think he just loves to drive around his little farm, wishing it was bigger. I often say to him to slow down, to take it easy, that he's on holidays... but he reckons it's like he is on holidays ,and he loves working on the tractor.

We have done so much with the old blue girl, pulled tree stumps, carted rubbish, carted the water cart when we are burning  rubbish, Carted  these huge loads of rocks, which were every where in our house yard. We use her with a jib on the back as a hoist when we are  butchering the sheep or pigs, and she is used regularly for getting loads of firewood from up on the hill behind the house and dragging around all the fencing materials as my husband has renewed most of the fencing on our place and added a few new ones.

We had a very  tumble down unused and messy  old chicken yard with some old sour plum trees,and when we had a very good old friend visiting we took advantage of the extra hands to remove the posts. I always hate to watch when he is  pulling posts or stumps, as I have a real fear of tractors  as they can be very dangerous if not handled sensibly,but he has worked with them most of his life.
Unfortunately  at some point all machinery needs repairs. While doing some work the tyre was staked and had to be replaced, and as there had been an ongoing issue with brakes my man  had a big day of repairs. Thank goodness he is handy with all that stuff other wise it would cost a fortune in repair bills.
And last but not least the tractor is a social vehicle, . The  final photo is one I love, my man and his brother next door were busy beavering away on  slashing the grass down on both of  our places, and he seemed to be taking quite a while longer then normal when I looked out and found them chatting away over the fence, their respective machines parked nearby...and they reckon that women can talk, you should see and hear these two together. They are good mates, and that's good !!!

So here's hoping the "Old Blue Girl" is around a while yet, I don't mind sharing my man with her and I hope that their relationship lasts for many years to come.
So until I  am back next time,
Cheers to everyone
Jane from Aus.